Board and Advisory Committee

These are the key folks working hard behind the scenes to help bring the festival and associated activities to you:

BOARD

Chris Maden
President

Chris started singing chanteys in 2002 in San Francisco. Upon moving to Portsmouth in 2008, he was amazed and delighted to find a fantastic community of traditional music and this wonderful festival right on his doorstep. He was a volunteer that first year, and a performer in 2009 and several subsequent years. He became President of PMFF in 2019. A former Working Chanteyman at Mystic Seaport Museum, he has also performed at festivals in San Francisco, Chicago, Urbana (IL); taught chanteys in Florida, Illinois, and New Hampshire, and started still-running chantey sings in Florida and Illinois. He released his first album, Shower Chanteys, in 2018.

Lynz Morahn
Vice President

Lynz asked her parents for a violin when she was five years old, and music has been a love of her life ever since. In high school, she was honored to participate in regional and state choirs, and as an adult, she has turned her violin into a fiddle and found great joy in folk music and social singing communities! She is regularly found playing, singing, and teaching around campfires, in living rooms, and at festivals and camps such as Rustic Roots, Fiddle Hell, Fat Toad, TradMaD, and the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival and CT Sea Music Festival. She released her first album in June of 2019. Lynz first attended PMFF in 2018, and soon after joined the board and helped navigate the digital festival situation over the past years. This year, she is serving as the VP of the Board, Chief Mate to Chris Maden.

Nick Noble
Treasurer

A lifelong lover of music and singing, Nick has hosted “The Folk Revival” radio program on WICN (Worcester Public Radio) since 2008. Introduced to the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival in 2009, since then he has hosted an annual three-hour show featuring maritime music and artists from the PMFF lineup. Beginning in 2014, he has regularly hosted venues at the Festival and has twice been a featured PMFF performer leading the crowd in singing as “Nick Noble & Friends.” A retired educator and author of seven books on historical topics (including one on folk music history), Nick has been a member of the PMFF Board since 2019-20, currently serving as Treasurer.

Ernie Pigeon
Secretary

Ernie developed an interest in Folk Music back at the beginning of “The Great Folk Boom” in the late 1950’s.  He learned how to play the guitar in the manner of the day:  self taught, finger picking, on back porches and around camp fires with friends sharing a bottle of questionable wine, and building up a repertoire of songs suited to the genre and the era.  But he had yet to become deeply interested in the music of the sea.  

After fully retiring from his lifetime job as an aerospace engineer in 2004, he gained more time to pursue his love of folk music. In the Fall of 2007 he found himself in the City of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the last full weekend of September, and stumbling into the Press Room discovered the PMFF and the wonderful world of robust singing of the music of the sea with kindred spirits.  He never looked back.

Becoming a regular at the once monthly Sea Music Sings at the Press Room in Portsmouth, he amassed a good sized repertoire.  He also became a regular with “Three Sheets To The Wind” in Gloucester, Massachusetts, with whom he still sings on a regular basis, now twice a month, and has performed with them at gigs over much of New England for many years. For several years he volunteered for various chores at the PMFF prior to his involvement with the Advisory Committee and currently, the Executive Board of the PMFF.

Keeping up his interest in the more general “Folk Music” genre, and the many ways in which it has developed over the years, Ernie currently leads a 4 piece band called the “Essex River Rounders”, playing regular gigs weekly in the North Shore Massachusetts area, and at local festivals, farmer’s markets, house parties and other events.  He and his very supportive wife, Amy, have since 2014 run a coffee house in Ipswich, Massachusetts called “The Along The Way Coffee House” with monthly shows that have featured many of the performers that have appeared at the PMFF in previous years, and/or will appear at the 2023 festival.  The Coffee House has also featured local Jazz groups, classical musicians, and the occasional soft rock band. With Amy’s help, he sets up and runs sound for a yearly two day Ipswich festival called Art On The Green, and also for outdoor Summer time worship services at their church on Sunday Mornings.  During the cooler seasons, and for over a decade, once a week for practice and then Sunday mornings for real, Amy and Ernie are both regular members of the First Church In Ipswich Choir, Ernie in the bass row, and Amy as a soprano.

Ernie and Amy live in Newburyport, Massachusetts and also spend much of their time at their second home in Ipswich.  They look forward to meeting both old and new friends at the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, both this year and into the future.

Jay Boland

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Gail Finn

Gail Finn is descended from a long-line of talented musicians and singers and grew up in a large family surrounded by music… dad on guitar and mom on the piano and all of us, parents and siblings, singing together. Music of all types was encouraged to be shared and welcome in our house and since no TV was available, there was a lot of listening to the radio, playing records and reel-to-reel tapes and sharing songs we all learned in school. At age 10 (4th Grade), I went to Mystic Seaport on a class trip and saw the Morgan for the first time and heard the sailing stories and in 5th Grade visited the New Bedford Whaling Museum and learned the sea song “Blow Ye Winds in the Morning.” After many visits to the Mystic Seaport Festival and visiting
tall ships in New London, CT, Nova Scotia, Canada, Dublin, Ireland, Portsmouth, NH and other ports, I continue to be fascinated by tall ships and enjoy listening to and singing sea songs and chanteys.

Jeff Keller

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Persis Thorndike

Persis Thorndike’s mother sang sea chanteys to her at bedtime from the time she was small. Persis has been singing science fiction folk music since 1994, and discovered PMFF and chantey singing (again) in 2015. Persis comes to the Board with a long history (30 years) of running folk festivals and science fiction conventions, and has spent the past two years running the virtual PMFF’s and the monthly chantey sings along with other festivals. Persis has been on the PMFF Board since 2019, and is happy to sing along with almost anyone!

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Sara Banleigh

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Janet Buck

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Julia Eager

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Laura Ellum

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Amanda Finn

Amanda has spent her entire life around music. Not only was she raised in a musical family surrounded by guitars, accordions, and singers, she also pursued music on her own both in and outside school. Besides participating in numerous choirs, orchestras, and theater groups since childhood, she has also learned piano, viola, ukulele, and the folk harp. There are many more instruments on her bucket list! She feels so honored to be a part of the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival and is looking forward to enjoying all the sea shanties and folk music in Septembe

Nicole Hourihan

Nicole first started playing fiddle in Boston back in 2011, soon became a fiddle teacher themself, and has been in the local folk music scene ever since. They have sung live on WICN Radio and collaborated on several CDs, and nowadays they perform live gigs in the southern Maine and New Hampshire area. Nicole spent five years working on submarines and is currently a deckhand based out of coastal Maine. They have been a festival volunteer since 2012 and joined the PMFF Advisory Board in 2019

Jay Iannini

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Alec Janis

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Bill Lehrman

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Rob Mckeown

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Linn Phipps

Linn has hugely enjoyed making new, virtual links with worldwide singing communities through Zoom sings during the pandemic period. She is passionate about finding ways to sustain these amazing links. She has been involved as a deliverer and volunteer at virtual folk festivals, particularly across the USA, for nearly two years. For over 40 years a Gaelic singer. Linn started shanty singing in the lockdown. Now she hosts a Sopranos shanty crew and sings with many regular UK/ US shanty sings. From her base in the UK, Linn led PMFF’s Virtual component in September 2022.

Amy Pigeon

Amy is relatively new to Sea Music and Shanties.  She was introduced to this genre in Portsmouth at the Press Room and in Gloucester but working as a Nurse Practitioner kept her from participating fully until her retirement in 2014.
Rarely leading songs, she’s happiest singing choruses with Three Sheets to the Wind. Music is a big part of her life, singing in the Church Choir, volunteering (and baking) at the Along the Way Coffeehouse and hosting music gatherings.
When she isn’t singing, she’s making quilts or sewing ( she makes non disposable menstrual kits for villages in Guatemala). She is Vice President on the Essex County Needle Craft Guild.

Heidi Slaney

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In addition to the above, we also rely on an extended network of people who contribute their time and skills in various ways too—and we thank them all!